


Wandering Star

by AdelaCathcart



Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, The Book of Dust - Philip Pullman
Genre: Adultery, Canon Compliant, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, I am going to hell for this, Nice Guy Eddie Coulter, Pre-Canon, The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known, everybody's terrible, misery fic for the plague year, now with more adultery, the rewards of being loved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-02-23 00:50:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23869729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdelaCathcart/pseuds/AdelaCathcart
Summary: The news of Lyra’s death had devastated him. He didn’t know her as Lyra, of course—the whimsical name, like the telltale beetle-browed face, had Asriel written all over it—so instead he called his daughter “Elizabeth” after the great aunt who raised him, or sometimes, straying into reveries of the patriarch he’d almost been, “little Eddie,” “Ted the Third.” Legally, Lyra was Edward’s daughter. The death certificate read “Baby Girl Coulter, stillborn.” Any child a man’s wife bears belongs to him by default.
Relationships: Edward Coulter/Marisa Coulter, Lord Asriel/Marisa Coulter
Comments: 6
Kudos: 46





	Wandering Star

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by an offhand comment I made in chat about the possibility of a young Edward Coulter (“I kind of dig the idea of him as a heartbroken guy in his late 20s getting his ass handed to him by this middle-aged aristocrat adventurer with fourteen houses"), by the gangster's wife who fucks James Bond at the beginning of _Casino Royale_ ("I had so many chances to be happy, so many nice guys"), and by my favorite scene from the 1967 film _Bedazzled_. If you've seen it you'll know the one. If you haven't, don't, it's terrible.
> 
> “I want men to admire me, but that's a trick you learn at school--a movement of the eyes, a tone of voice, a touch of the hand on the shoulder or the head. If they think you admire them, they will admire you because of your good taste, and when they admire you, you have an illusion for a moment that there's something to admire.”  
> ― Graham Greene, _The End of the Affair_
> 
> "We felt the imprisonment of being a girl, the way it made your mind active and dreamy, and how you ended up knowing which colors went together. We knew that the girls were our twins, that we all existed in space like animals with identical skins, and that they knew everything about us though we couldn’t fathom them at all." —Jeffrey Eugenides, _The Virgin Suicides_

The news of Lyra’s death had devastated him. He didn’t know her as Lyra, of course—the whimsical name, like the telltale beetle-browed face, had Asriel written all over it—so instead he called his daughter “Elizabeth” after the great aunt who raised him, or sometimes, straying into reveries of the patriarch he’d almost been, “little Eddie,” “Ted the Third.” Legally, Lyra was Edward’s daughter. The death certificate read “Baby Girl Coulter, stillborn.” Any child a man’s wife bears belongs to him by default.

This excess of emotion makes Marisa profoundly uncomfortable. Her husband had always been mild and good-natured, slow to anger, quick to forgive, but grief, quite out of proportion to its tiny object, has perhaps permanently disarranged a once-clockworklike mechanism. His heron dæmon, she whose every fluid step had been a poem, now paces the house for hours in mincing, ragged circuits, and everything from livestock (“our own little lamb should have been here with us”) to the chthonic railway (“please give priority to elderly and disabled passengers and those traveling with perambulators”) elicits from Edward a flood of burbling, effeminate tears. Marisa is forced to clasp his slender, trembling body tightly in her arms, shamelessly false words of comfort on her lips, and sometimes she cries too, from panic, because his needy embrace is like being buried in wet concrete.

Otherwise, she’s pulled off the perfect crime: accrued the deference due a childbearing woman, not to mention a bereaved one, and shirked the never-ending, thankless abnegation required of a woman with a child. She doesn’t know what will become of the baby and she doesn’t care. Her ligaments unloosen, her milk dries up, her body returns like ferrous putty to a shape she recognizes as her own, and the leaves begin to turn. She keeps up the pretense of grief for as long as she can stand to (the suffocating veils, the quiet nights in, the empathetic letters from Edward’s barren aunts), and then makes arrangements to go home to Geneva for awhile, to get out from under the cloying calla-lily stench of mourning.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to come with you, sweetheart?” Edward says, searching her face with those bland wet eyes, kissing her brow, absentmindedly twisting her wedding ring. “I wouldn’t mind, you know. I could carry your things and fetch your meals. I’d rub your feet when you got tired. Do you really feel quite strong enough to travel on your own?”

“I’m very independent, Edward,” she reminds him mildly, letting him paw her.

“Yes, of course you are. It’s me that’s not. I don’t like to let you out of my sight. It just feels important that I take care of you now, Marisa, since I wasn’t able to… to care for…” Behind his back, the monkey had been grooming the heron gently, trying to keep her calm, and now Marisa's ruining his efforts and he's gesturing wildly at her, _do something!_ but it's too late. Another conversation is cancelled due to flooding.

She tries to talk to Asriel about it—her one confidant!—but all he does is laugh. “Edward’s welcome to come and visit the baby any time he likes,” he says jovially. “I know _you_ aren’t going to.” She doesn’t answer because his cock is in her throat, but she peeps up to see him with his arms crossed behind his head, beaming expansively as if he has nothing in the world to lose, and for a moment she considers how wonderful it would feel to kill him. He is beautiful and utterly magnetic; even now, in some childish corner of her mind, she’s proud to be whatever she is to him. No man has ever made her feel so small before. She fucks him desperately with her face and her hands, trying to drown herself in the thick salty fluids that congeal in her throat and sting the back of her nose and make her eyes water, she melts his harsh laughter into plaintive semi-syllables that might or might not comprise her name, and then at last—sweet victory—she feels him dying in her arms.

He’d wanted to fuck but she’d given a little shake of her head—“Not supposed to, still too soon”—and he smiled ruefully in a way that said he couldn't be expected to know. It’s dishonest but not, strictly speaking, a lie—the obstetrician gave her permission to resume intercourse with her husband, and she had done so, but this is different, and Asriel would only gloat if she tried to explain. She always tells herself she’s going to hold something back when she’s with him, some scrap of dignity to clothe herself in after, but then he gets his hands on her and she opens like a flower in the sun. His utter indifference to the _good_ in favor of the _interesting_ makes it irresistible to let him ransack her, every awful corner of her labyrinthine self, places she's never wanted to look before, just to see what he will find worthwhile. If she told him she was murdering children to eat them he’d probably want to know how they were cooked.

Now he draws her into his lap, into the tawdry chemical smell of hotel sheets, and presses his lips to the back of her shoulder. “What if all I did was kiss you”—his hand sneaks up her leg—“very softly”—under her chemise, excruciatingly slow—“ _very_ carefully”—ghostly over her thighs—“with only the tip of my tongue…”

She can’t help herself, she’s panting, her head droops back onto his shoulder. “When have you ever done _anything_ carefully?” she manages to protest as he licks her neck. He snorts softly and the trail of moisture under her ear turns cold.

“I never had a reason to before.”

A year or two ago he would’ve begged her to run away with him, and she would have soared a little while on the wings of his grandiose, perfectly impossible dreams, and then donned her icy armor and shut him down. Now he probably won’t bother. She loves him deeply, extravagantly, intractably, but they both know Asriel would have made a terrible husband. When he looks at her it’s with a searchlight beam, his gaze is so intense it burns her face, after being with him she feels scorched and shamed. When she’s not directly in his line of sight it’s possible he forgets she’s alive.

Edward was born to take care of a wife. His every move is made with her in mind. Like a robin tending the nest he loves to sneak delicacies home for her from state dinners she couldn’t be bothered to attend; when he knows she’s had a hard day he brings roses. He never stays late at work without getting word to her so she won’t worry. His absent father and maiden aunts compensated for his unimpressive birth by pulling every string they could to send him to a good school, and once there his natural sweetness and intelligence made him popular with all the right people. At only twenty-nine he’s a close friend and advisor to the young king, and as the new regime strengthens its ties with the established power of the Magisterium he grows more important by the day, but his ambitions end at being a good provider. At heart he’s a family man, a binary star. Marisa is a comet.

When they heard the joyous tidings, Edward’s aunts had clasped their hands over their hearts and embraced her while he beamed, and Marisa had wept with happiness, so touched was she by their freely-given affection, so unlike the prim kisses on the cheek she was raised to be satisfied with, that she forgot their love was really all for Lyra, not for her. She was invisible to them, she realized later, only the courier of the thing they were opening their arms to. While Elizabeth had carved the roast and Eulalia selected the very nicest cut for the mother-to-be, Eugenia had squeezed Millicent’s hand and whispered dreamily, “There’s going to be a baby in the family again.”

She’s on her back with her ankles crossed behind Asriel’s neck (no point in denying herself now, she’d reasoned, and she enjoys reminding him her love for him could kill her),when without warning she bursts into tears.

Immediately he scrambles off her, trailing moisture that turns cold before it hits her leg. He glances at his dæmon for help but Stelmaria looks back blankly, and the monkey between her paws is stock-still, avidly spectating as his woman falls apart. “You’re hurt,” says Asriel, frowning.

She nods, choked with sobs, because she is.

With the efficiency of a field medic he gets her a handful of ice wrapped in a washcloth, two salicylate tablets, and a blocky hotel tumbler full of wine. Dutifully she holds the ice against her cunt—that’s fitting, she thinks grimly—and the sensation soothes and distracts her; forcing herself to drink and swallow interrupts the flow of tears. Soon she gets her breathing under control.

“Better?” Asriel asks her, not unkindly, but of course it will never be better. She sniffles and wonders whether he would care if she died.

“We’ve only just—only _just_ managed to minimize the inevitable consequences of this—this—and you... you’re so eager to do it all again.”

He laughs and reaches for her empty glass. “Why not? As consequences go, I really couldn’t be more pleased.”

Asriel’s not a small man, nor young, but that's easy to forget because he moves with a lithe, feral grace, and the propensity for swift action shows through in every sinew. He never makes threats because he doesn't need to: his very presence telegraphs violence, a legacy of dominance and subjugation flows in his blue blood. His is the self-assurance of a man who seldom fails, has seldom had to consider failure, never falls unless it's backwards into unexpected success. No calamity could derange him because he'll never follow any star but his own. He might be the most selfish person she's ever met. A crucible’s heat would only concentrate him, make him brighter, more terrible, angelic.

He smiles to himself as he fills her glass and drinks from it. "She's a wonderful baby, Marisa—bold, lively, affectionate. Clever, too. Cleverer than us. Really, you should see her. She's delightful."

Jealousy slices her bruised heart like a razor, and thick black blood pours out. She'll get no sympathy from this quarter. She feels sick. "I never knew you could be so maudlin," she says sweetly, raising her lips to the rim of the glass so he's forced to tip it up for her. When she summons him back to her arms he hesitates—her skin is still very cold from the ice he gave her—but his resistance dissolves in an instant. He's never been able to resist her and he knows it. She can tell by the dead look in his eyes.

She should confess these sins and be forgiven, but she knows enough of priests to resent confiding her indiscretions to filthy-minded men who regard the confessional booth as little more than glorified peep show. As a girl she used to spin tales of wild exploits for them, reveling in the mischief she'd only recently learned her tongue could do, making them sigh and stutter as they hurriedly absolved her. Once she even heard a soft slapping sound on the other side of the screen as the father confessor abused himself then and there. Now that she's a woman and in full control of her abilities she's resolved no man should enjoy her unless he offers something useful in return. Instead of mopping her tears on a strong shoulder she pours them into a jeweled breviary while the host melts in her mouth. It's wrong to accept the sacrament unshriven but the one who will judge her already knows what she's done. Men can be endlessly deceived, but it should be impossible to lie to God.

Shortly after they were married, Marisa and her husband had attended a ball to celebrate the king’s birthday. It was their first really formal occasion together and they were both giddy as children. Edward encouraged her to spend far too much on the gown. She’d chosen deep crimson, full skirts, cut low in the back: a little gaudy for a married woman, but in it she was radiant. The admiration of the other guests warmed her like sunlight. One set of eyes was always on her too long, and with a start she recognized the nobleman watching her across the dance floor: a German diplomat who’d been her lover years before in Geneva. There was nothing for it but to warn her husband, to spare him embarrassment if they were introduced. Edward’s gentle smile had never faltered, although his white-gloved hand was tense against the skin of her bare back. “That’s all right, my dear,” he’d said evenly, pulling her close to whisper in her ear. “But if he tries to cut in I’ll have to kill him.”

**Author's Note:**

> Don’t take aspirin with alcohol, it’s bad for your liver.
> 
> Here's the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8T0cRt8efsQ


End file.
